Sep 23, 2014

Popular Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is breaching out into other product niches. This week, the device maker launched a dedicated video game controller, which will go on sale in the country in less than 48 hours.

The official pricing of the accessory hasn’t been made public, but for the time being we know that the first 300 buyers will be able to grab the Xiaomi Bluetooth game controller for a ridiculous $0.16 / €0.12. Xiaomi is known for its low cost devices, but this is beyond all expectations. As FoneArena reports, the new game controller is compatible with the Xiaomi MiPad tablet and Mi TV, but it seems highly unlikely that the company won’t extend things to include some of its smartphones. It’s quite interesting to note that Xiaomi is attempting to make an entry in the tablet gaming ecosystem here. It has just outfitted its only tablet with the possibility of pairing it with its dedicated gaming controller. And you know what that means, right? The Xiaomi MiPad is now a reputable competitor against the NVIDIA Shield tablet announced a few months ago.

The NVIDIA slate was touted as the first consumer-friendly gaming tab, but by the looks of it it’s no longer alone. After all, the specs of the two tabs are also quite similar. Let’s take a look to see and compare.

Xiaomi MiPad

This tablet was the first to take advantage of NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 SoC processor, even before the company’s own Shield came out. The slate takes advantage of a 7.9-inch screen with 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution, which is nice to have on a gaming tablet. Everything onboard is fitted with 2GB of RAM and backed up by 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD). The battery inside providing the juice is of 6700mAh capacity, so it should last quite a lot.

NVIDIA Shield Tablet

The NVIDIA tab has a full 8-inch display but offers a less impressive resolution, meaning 1920 x 1200 pixels. However, this is an improvement from the original Tegra 4 model. Under the hood lies the same Tegra K1 chip clocked at 2.2GHz combined with 2GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of RAM. So you can see the two tablets are quite similar, except in the resolution department where the Xiaomi model proves to be more advanced. So the battle in the budding gaming tablet segment has started. NVIDIA throws in a bunch of games optimized to work under the Tegra K1 platform with the tablet, but Xiaomi offers the price-friendly alternative. Who will win?